tenant vs.apartment landlord regarding charges on our 'move-out' bill?
I’m warning this may be somewhat of a long question but here goes!
My bf and I moved into an apt. march 2010 and signed a 9 month lease. We went to the office end of nov and explained having both been recently laid off we were unable to come up with our last months (dec.) payment of 0 and that we’re probably now forced to break our lease. The staff member replied "I’d hate for you to break your lease and lose out on getting any money back as you’ll have to pay an extra 00 just to GET OUT of the lease so come up with half by…(i forget which day exactly, but in the 2nd week of dec. sometime) then go ahead and pay the other half when you recieve your deposit(s) back in Jan, but you’ll be charged a late fee."….Fine, if we can’t stay due to shortage of money in the first place, why back out early and put ourselves in an even bigger hole we figured. We borrowed the money and paid the 1st half by the new due date. Now, as of the middle of nov., we had been staying at my boyfriends moms’ to help her out with things AND beginning of nov. our cable/internet was shut off…(again, unable to pay) as well as sometime during the END of nov. our electricity was also shut off (we were full-time at his moms so we aren’t for sure when this happened). I just wanted to give you a little background of the whole situation, now for the mess we’re in….
When we were in the office that day explaining the dec. rent situation, we got on the subject of cleaning/move-out duties we were to do before handing in the keys. She explained all that was needed was "BASIC, EVERYDAY TYPE CLEANING…. dust, sweep, mop, vacuum, wipe down counters/blinds/windows/mirrors." I didn’t know at this point in time that we had no electricity so when she said to vacuum I didn’t think twice about it so we do everything listed above, minus the vacuuming. Later explaining to her that due to no electricity, it would cost us something to turn on service again. We didn’t have that extra $$ to give PG&E just so we can vacuum our 538 sq ft. apartment for less than 10 minutes then shut the service off again?! That would be like throwing money down the drain. She said she understood and to pick up the carpet by hand and to sweep it the best we could.
I have a small (6 lb) dog who NEVER would pee inside and does not shed, but common courtesy I asked if we needed to shampoo the carpets (again, before we knew about the electricity being off) she replied "No, we do that after each tenant anyway, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT"…We had shampooed our carpet THREE TIMES in the 7 months we lived there so I assured her they had been well cared for anyway.
While moving in/out, our big furniture was no match for the narrow hallway and doors so we ended up with a few…(less than say 5-6) ‘scuff marks’ on the wall. Not big, dark, 3 inch marks but I’m talking damn near not even visible unless you really look for them. I asked what we do about them and she replies ‘If they are on all the walls and really bad, you can bring a container into the office and I’ll have maintenance give you some touch up paint, otherwise if not, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, we’re used to scuff marks from moving in/out."….We do our cleaning and turn in keys. She says within 20 days to expect a check for deposit(s) (0 for apt and 0 for my dog). 21 days later, we get a certified letter, no check. Instead a BILL saying not only are we not getting anything back, we OWE THEM another 0 to be paid in 10 days. WHAT?!
We are being billed for ‘professional cleaners (6 hrs @ /hr), painters (5 hrs @ /hr PLUS 2 GALLONS of paint ) and a carpet guy to come in and put brand new carpet in @ 5 because they supposedly had done a ‘UV Light Radiation Scan’ and came up with a pet urine stain that soaked all the way through the carpet and PAD leaving the carpet destroyed’….We were not contacted regarding any of this, I would’ve gone back paid PG&E, vacuumed, shampooed and touched up the marks my damn self! We were never told anything about a cleaning service, painters etc coming in once we had moved out to fix the place if need be, let alone were we warned that WE would have to pay for these things!! I have since found out our carpet was almost 3 years old (they charged us based on the supposed life the carpet had left…55 months at /mo.) and 3 years for apartment carpet seems maybe not old, but not new either. Who KNOWS how many people have lived there w/pets etc. And 5 hours of painting for scuff marks? Really? How do we dispute this? No pics were taken before or after on our part (STUPID i know now) so I’m afraid it will be our word vs. theres. We’ve already begun a letter to property management, but this whole thing is still such a mess. Funny thing is, my step-sister just moved into our apt so I’ve checked, it’s not like they painted th